


Where do vanished objects go? or The Phoenix and the Flame

by EffingOwls



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asexual Character, Bi-Curiosity, F/M, M/M, Miscommunication, Mystery, Post-Hogwarts, Public Libraries are Amazing!, Sex Toys, Thief, and it is not subtle, some m/m in later chapters, there is sex, who still enjoys some sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:20:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27765136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EffingOwls/pseuds/EffingOwls
Summary: Justin Finch-Fletchley is navigating post-Hogwarts life with his girlfriend, dealing with the lack of public libraries in the wizarding world as best he can, and trying not to worry too much about the famous thief known as 'The Phoenix' currently tormenting the Greater London area.
Relationships: Justin Finch-Fletchley/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1





	1. Justin

The bathwater was going tepid and his tea on the lip of the tub had been cold for a while now, but Justin couldn’t be bothered to get out for his wand. He was engrossed in a book he had propped on his exposed knees, one hand on the base of the spine, idly fiddling with the edge of the pages. The bubbles coating the bath’s surface were moving gently, forming pillowy mounds and delicate spires. Occasionally, a lump would split off from the rest and float upward to join the half-dozen candles already floating about the room, casting odd, sparkling shadows over everything. It was a very pleasant end to what had been an altogether unpleasant day.

The book had been hard come by. For some reason he hadn’t anticipated the second house elf or the suit of armor that chased him down the street. Mr. Farrell was an unusually suspicious man, and Farrell Manor was an unusually well-protected estate. Not only were the Manor and its various out-buildings lined with anti-intruder jinxes, reinforcement charms, and what have you, but the grounds and the village itself were blanketed in what must have been one of the country’s largest anti-apparition spells. Normally, Justin wouldn’t have tried a target so rich in magical defenses, especially with the rumors floating around that the Phoenix had resurfaced. When he heard that the Farrell Manor library had a copy of Alfred Esterpond’s _Here and There: A Guide to Vanished Objects_ , he simply couldn’t resist.

Justin didn’t like to think of himself as a thief, he preferred ‘light-fingered admirer,’ or something of that nature. There was nothing malicious about his thievery — he even returned books when he felt it was safe to do so. The trouble was, he was raised next to a public library and on the principle that knowledge should be free and accessible to all. While the irony that his parents signed him up to attend Eton before his Hogwarts letter arrived did not escape him, he carried this belief with him through his school years, even entertaining the idea of becoming a wizarding librarian himself once he’d finished.

When he graduated, moved to London, and set about trying to get himself a library card to a local wizarding library, he was astounded to discover that the institution didn’t exist outside of Hogwarts, except in private manors and the occasional private club. For two years, after failing to be accepted at any of the five magical research institutions in London, he brooded over his measly supply of school textbooks and visited Flourish & Blotts so often he was banned from the shop. With no money for new books and a mind-numbing job at the London Rivers Oversight Company, subterranean branch, he took to ‘borrowing’ interesting-looking titles from the shelves of the manager’s office. His coworkers shared his frustration at the lack of public book access and even went so far as to start a lending library between the six of them, but these were mostly fiction and gardening books, not the sort Justin was after.

It was his last girlfriend who had gotten him into actual theft (among other more…enjoyable things). She was particularly adept at disillusionment charms and magical tracing spells. Of course, it turned out she was using her skills to steal from half the shops on the block, and Justin still felt he had some moral compass left to him, so that relationship ended in shambles. He wasn’t stealing to intentionally hurt people, and as he was only stealing books on advanced magical theory, he wasn’t exactly causing much distress with his thievery anyway. These books tended to come from the private clubs and manor libraries and probably hadn’t been opened in decades. “It’s a service to the books,” he told himself once, but that was a stretch, even for him.

The last three books had all been related to vanishing charms. It had developed into his latest focus, and he had already made a few clever inventions of his own from the theory he’d digested, the most useful of which was a semen-vanishing condom of sorts. He was not proud. _Here and There_ , if it lived up to Professor Flitwick’s review in _Old Tomes Monthly_ , promised to be still more enlightening. So far, the first chapter had just been literature review and had already summarized two of the books he’d stolen previously. He paged on, frustrated and eager for the next chapter.

There was a click somewhere in the apartment and Justin looked up, momentarily puzzled. Then there was the sound of a door opening and a voice calling: “Justin? It’s me.”

“Shit,” he gasped, accidentally submerging his book. With one hand he flapped the sopping book in the air, and with the other clawed his way over the edge of the tub, spilling half the bathwater as he tumbled out onto the floor. A flailing foot caught his mug of tea, which tumbled into the bath with a loud slurping sound.

“Justin?” the voice called again, coming nearer. “Are you in the bath?”

Like a fish, he wriggled across the cold tiled floor, the wet pages of the book clinging to his thigh as they slapped against him. His other hand closed on his wand and with a flash of light, candles, bubbles, water, book, and mug vanished. As the door opened, he thrust his wand into the basket of toilet paper by his right ear and tried to look innocent.

His current girlfriend, Quinn, looked bemusedly down at him, eyebrows full of exasperated amusement. “You know you’re allowed to stay in the bath.” Her eyes trailed down his very wet and very naked body. “Did you fall or were you trying to be sexy?”

He blushed and raised a leg to cover his groin.

“That’s worse,” Quinn snorted and knelt down to help him. “Come on, up you go.”

“Thanks,” he muttered as she handed him his towel. He brought it up to his hair so as not to have to meet her curious eyes.

“Seriously though, were you wanking or something? You look so guilty.”

He paused, considering the excuse. She wasn’t the type to mind, more the type to watch. “What would you say if I was?”

She snorted again. “I’d say you softened pretty quick when I turned up.”

“Cold tile!” he said defensively. “Besides, you startled — ng.” He shivered as she ran a hand over his dripping cock, still curled like a snail over his balls. He still needed to unvanish his book and see if he could work the moisture out of it without ruining it, but how was he supposed to do that with his muggle girlfriend in the apartment, let alone with her hand on his—? Her fingers pressed into him, right at the join between cock and torso. “Ng,” he said again.

“Do you want to finish?” she asked, eyes impassive, as if she was asking if he wanted tea.

The sound he made was neither affirmation nor refusal, but he covered her hand with his own and she smiled. The book could wait.


	2. Quinn

Quinn had never gone out with a muggle before. Indeed, she’d never really had a conversation with a muggle until the day Justin Finch-Fletchley had barged into the wine shop where she worked, toppling half a dozen bottles as he tried to hide among the racks. Apparently he was hiding from his ex who glided past the window a moment later looking the comparative picture of grace. He had apologized over and over, offered to pay for the damage (though she could tell by his expression he couldn’t afford it), and stammered so much she wound up pouring him a sample to get him to calm down.

She had also never gone out with a maintenance worker before. He explained over his second glass of red that he worked in hydro-management and spent most of his days underground working in tunnels. She said he looked none the worse for it and he said she was very kind but she hadn’t seen him at the end of a shift.

When he asked about her job, she waffled away about tastings and trainings and the ins and outs of life behind the counter. She couldn’t tell him what she really did or his eyes would have bugged right out of his head. Normally, it was the squib girl Alice who worked in the front shop. Quinn wouldn’t have been there at all if Alice hadn’t been on her holidays and Winifred, the manager, hadn’t needed someone to watch it. Her real work was in the back, through the staff room’s back wall and down a narrow flight of steps in what they called ‘the Gallery.’ The Gallery was a cellar the size of a warehouse and had stations for tasting, towers of shrinking boxes for delivery, shelves of herbs with which to pack and flavor the wines, and of course the bottles themselves.

These weren’t wines they could sell in the shop. They induced hallucinations, summoned ghosts, inspired ballads, allowed you to hover a foot off the ground for half an hour at a time, even made you breathe fire. Most effects were the result of careful rotation, the placement of herbs, and a host of specialized charms, but as with any magic as complex as winemaking, there were sometimes unexpected results. If you mislabelled a rosé, for instance, the bottle would explode. The cabernets that were stored on the east side of the gallery tended to cause the drinker to pick up a Birmingham accent. Every bottle from 1902, no matter the variety, tasted strongly of salmon, though as the fairy infestation had been quite significant in the early 1900s, Quinn didn’t believe this was all that mysterious.

The true pièce de résistance was the 1735 claret known in the community as ‘ _la_ _flamme._ ’ Kept in a temperature-controlled display under dozens of protective and preservative enchantments, no one knew what its properties were. Hundreds of legends surrounded it. Some said it had been bottled for Napoleon when he visited Bordeaux, others that it had given the seer Sergius Trent the famous vision foretelling the goblin rebellion, while still others claimed that the celebrated Sophia Spatmoor drank it just before her duel with the dark wizard Maximus.

It was a pity, she remembered thinking to herself as she offered Justin a third glass, that he was a muggle. How sweet his eyes would look as she told him these things. He was so politely interested in whatever she had to say, it was a shame she couldn’t tell him any of the things about her that were actually interesting. A shame she couldn’t bring him home with her, what with that chin and that ass and those hip bones that showed even through his shirt and trousers. And he was charming, open, honest. She actually had to check to make sure she hadn’t served him one of the zinfandels touched with veritaserum, because he told her straight out he was a thief. Oh, it was a little thing — some advanced robotics series that had gone out of print — and he was embarrassed when he said it, but made no effort to excuse or justify his actions beyond explaining them.

At this point she had poured herself a glass and asked if he’d ever stolen from his ex, if that was why he was hiding from her. Well, she had to, didn’t she, now that she was imagining a white tablecloth between them, now an intimate sofa, now tangled sheets?

“Have dinner with me,” she had said, right into his rambling explanation of his ex’s illicit cash flow.

Today, she decided she’d stop in at Justin’s place to drop off his birthday present in advance so he’d have it on the day even though she’d be out of town. They’d been dating for two months now, and it wasn’t the first time she’d walked in on him in the bath, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard a slurping sound coming from the bathroom. She was, however, surprised to find him slick as an eel, sprawled across the bathroom floor, eyes wide as if she’d caught him doing something shameful.

How was she supposed to resist that? And when he was standing with his glistening dick just a foot from her hand, how was she supposed to resist _that_? She was not cock-hungry; genitals, sperm — these weren’t the things that turned her on. It was the engagement, the expressions, the sharing of private parts and actions. But even when he laid out an explicit proposal of sex over dinner, Justin had a way of being naked that felt surprised, like he was unsure how it had happened. Finding him naked on the floor, just out of the bath, was this to the extreme, so it was almost unconsciously that she reached out a hand and ran it over his dick, still slippery with bathwater.

Her tone wasn’t hungry when she asked, “Do you want to finish?” She was simply here, he was naked. The math did itself.

He pressed her hand more firmly to his pubic bone and she smiled, feeling the tingle of hairs shaved away. She pushed against him for a moment more, letting him rock slightly into her touch in that semi-controlled way that let her know nothing she did would be quite enough. He was one of those boys — she knew the type; she had served more than a few at the Gallery — who could lose himself so utterly to a feeling that only physically melting him down into a stew of nerves and heart and spirit would sate him. But this was why humans invented the art of foreplay.

As he grew under her palm, she brushed one of his nipples feather light with the fingers of her other hand. She ghosted back and forth, just enough to let him feel she was there, and then slid her right hand up, grating against the slight stubble of his groin, and down, smoothly, to cup his balls, which were dancing in their sac with anticipation. He was breathing heavily by now and his fists had clenched at his sides to resist interfering. She noticed his eyes had closed, too, so she swooped in and caught his untouched nipple in her mouth. He twitched, but remained steady, and she ran her tongue back and forth across the hardened tip.

She was having entirely too much fun with him, but this was where she got her pleasure, hearing those ragged breaths, watching his eyes fluttering beneath their lids, feeling his hips cant against the air. Still, there was something to be said for the blown out way he looked at her once the building semen was on the outside, so she brought it up to the next level.

She would never let him know it was coming. First she released his balls and let her fingers trace gentle lines over his thighs and clenched abdomen, dipping into his bellybutton once or twice. Then she released his nipple from her lips, blowing it dry, though she kept the other stimulated under her drifting fingers. Only when he let out a breath that was more groan than air did she make her move, dropping her right hand to clasp his now extremely rigid penis.

“Gah—” He drew back at the sudden touch and she steadied him with her free hand on his shoulder. Slowly, tentatively, with eyes still closed, he pushed forward into the tunnel provided by her curled fingers and palm, his foreskin peeling back and then rolling forward as he dragged away again. It was moments like these Quinn was surprised she didn’t just say fuck it and pull out her wand. But doing things the muggle way had made her appreciate her magic a little more, at least that’s what she told herself. Watching his face twitch and spread with pleasure made her wonder if he felt something similar, going out with an asexual girl.

He had never heard of asexuality before she brought it up on their third date and she could practically see him poking out of his trousers, but he took it well enough (he had been deeply embarrassed that she’d noticed his erection) and seemed to have done his homework since. That’s not to say they didn’t have a robust sex life — they went at it often and had experimented in several ways, but he was always careful to ask about her boundaries. He knew, for instance, that she didn’t usually like being touched during sex, and now his arms were trembling at his sides with the strain of not participating. Well, strain was fun for a while, but perhaps it was time to give him something to do.

With a final, firm thrust down his shaft, she let go and he stepped back, blinking his eyes open. She hadn’t noticed when he’d dropped his towel, but now she swept it from the floor and laid it out on the little counter beside the sink.

“Up?” It was the first thing either of them had said since they started, and he seemed unable to respond. Whether because he was out of breath or because his mind was too wrapped up in his genitals, she wasn’t sure, but he complied. She took his right hand and her own and, interlaced, drew them up and down his reddened cock. His other hand drifted up his side and took up position over his nipples, imitating her brushing movements from earlier. Her other hand went back to tracing his thighs but this time focused on the underside and occasionally moved up to brush his perineum. When he seemed like he was nearing the brink, her fingers pressed hard against this spot, while her other hand released his cock and slid up his stomach and around to his side. She gripped his hip and pressed still harder against his perineum, whispering nonsense to him as his head rolled back against the frosted glass of the bathroom window. Free to move at his own pace now, his right hand became a blur and within seconds ropes of cum were flying up to paint his chest and stomach, which had frozen into solid planes of unyielding flesh. This part was quite enjoyable, too: feeling his body practically turn to stone as if he’d been petrified.

Once it was over, he collapsed fully against the window and his legs, which had drawn tight against the cabinets below him, drooped limply off the counter’s edge. Quinn moved around to his side to kiss him and let the hand that had been clenched under him, move up to lazily massage his scrotum and feel his balls and cock slowly droop, too.

“Nnn-ng,” he said gratefully into her lips.

She drew away and offered him the tissues. “See how much more fun it is with me?”


	3. Justin

Feeling like he could vanish on the spot, Justin mopped himself with tissues while Quinn went into the kitchen to fix up something for dinner. Cum wasn’t really her thing, and Justin couldn’t blame her. He couldn’t understand how muggles had the patience to clean away their bodily fluids. As soon as he heard the door of the fridge, he retrieved his wand and vanished the rest of the mess and then paused, wondering whether to recall the book and candles yet.

_Evanesco_ was a useful spell and the basic standard for vanishing objects, but bringing those objects back into being got complicated — fast. This process was called ‘recalling,’ both because you were recalling the objects from their vanished state and because to do that you had to literally recall them in your mind, that is, you had to remember them. You were, in a sense, remembering them into being. So, the longer you waited to recall them, the harder it became. It was not necessary to know them completely from a molecular level, but there was a level of detail, some ambiguous line beyond which the object would refuse to come back. On top of this, it became almost impossible to recall items in a different location than the one you vanished them in. Context, Professor Flitwick said, was essential to recovery.

Luckily for Justin, this was his apartment and he could revisit his bathroom whenever he liked. Unluckily, his girlfriend was here, and if she saw the book there would be questions. If it were just a matter of recalling it and putting it out of sight, he’d do it in a heartbeat, but the book was sopping wet and being vanished was the only thing preventing that damage from getting worse. No, he decided, poking his wand back among the toilet paper and pulling on his clothes. Best to wait until he could be alone with the book.

Dinner was a quick inhalation of some noodles Quinn had found in the cupboards and then a few minutes spent sharing their days. Quinn pointed out the box she’d brought him.

“And you’re not to open it before the day,” she insisted. “But also, don’t open it when your family’s here. They might not, ah, appreciate it.”

Intrigued, he shook it slightly as he took it into his bedroom, earning himself a disapproving growl from Quinn. Before she left, however, she hovered about the doorway, looking uncharacteristically hesitant.

“Yes?”

She bit her lip, not something he thought he’d ever seen her do before. “I…I’ve got something — there’s something I want to share with you, but, we’ll talk after I get back, after your birthday.”

“Sure,” he said, hoping this would walk the line between encouragement and not putting pressure on her. Then he kissed her cheek and she was gone.

Locking the door — he really should put a super-sensory charm on the hall to give himself some notice — Justin dashed back to the bathroom, grabbed his wand, and recalled what he had vanished, minus the soapy water. The candles he left stacked haphazardly on the counter, while he took the book into his bedroom and laid it gingerly on his desk, open to a random page. It was in bad shape, or would be if he didn’t dry it out without warping the pages. He clucked to himself as he examined it, lifting a sodden page, feeling the squashiness of the cover. He could try siphoning off the water, but he didn’t really trust that spell not to pull off the ink as well. He could try heating the book, but there was a danger the heat would deform it even more. Hm. This called for drastic measures and more specialized equipment; he’d better take it in to work.

While his coworkers had embraced his lending library idea, they were still unaware of his own private ‘lending’ library, and he wasn’t sure they’d be as sympathetic about that idea. So, when he apparated into the office and was hailed by Doris who was half of the night shift, he explained he’d left a report unfinished and scuttled to his corner desk before she could notice the bulge of the book under his jacket.

For the moment, he vanished it again, to prevent continued damage and to make sure Doris or whoever else was on night shift didn’t see it. Doris didn’t look like she had much to do; there was a copy of Wilmhurst’s Wondrous Adventures open on her desk and a half-eaten cauldron cake, but she seemed to be bored of them and was pacing along the far wall, or what should have been a wall.

The office was essentially a roughly hewn cave that bordered one of the smaller subterranean rivers that ran under London, and it was this river that made up the wall Doris was contemplating. Like an aquarium, but without the glass, the office looked into the misty current that glowed with strange, bioluminescent creatures. A few kelpies darted past, pursued by a man with a large bubble around his head. There was a great splash and the man broke out of the river and tumbled into the office, the three stunned kelpies flopping after him onto the floor.

“About time,” said Doris in a bored tone. “The transport’ll be here soon.”

“How many’d you catch tonight?” Justin asked.

“Twenty kelpies, three grindylows, and what seems to be an aquatic bowtruckle,” Doris reeled off, helping the man to his feet. “Was that all of them?”

“All I saw.”

“Well, I’ll meet the transport while you dry off.” And Doris went out through a side door, waving her wand at the unconscious kelpies to make them drift along after her.

The man, free of his bubble now, waved his wand so that hot air streamed over himself, drying him instantly. Neville was another of Justin’s coworkers and must be the other half of the night shift tonight. Where Doris was tall and black, he was pale and medium height, built out since his school days. Neville, of course, was Neville Longbottom, celebrated hero of the Battle of Hogwarts and only worked for the LROC to support himself during his internship at Hyde Park Greenhouse. Though Justin had been in hiding during the battle and only heard of Neville’s deeds after the fact, it didn’t take much to imagine him rallying their classmates against the forces of evil. He had a sharp, proud, take-no-prisoners and take-no-shit kind of attitude, which both made him the ideal employee when he felt like working, and the world’s worst employee when he didn’t. Though he wasn’t muggleborn like Justin or Doris, he had jumped at the chance to join their lending library when Justin had proposed it, and had even tried to get them writing letters to the Ministry in support of an official public library system before Doris told him he was getting carried away again and she’d throw him in the river if he didn’t sit down and read the ‘Ms. Mossfield’s _10 Tips for Successful Seedlings: Magical Waterplants_ ’ that she’d leant him.

Today, it looked like he had another Doris find. As Neville shifted it, rummaging for something on his desk, Justin caught a glimpse of the title: _Cultivating Fruit Fields in Europe and in the Mediterranean_. He wondered whether he should try to find Neville something more high level next time he went book hunting, but that might come back to bite him…

Neville straightened up with a photograph in his hand and came over to sit beside Justin, dropping the picture in front of him. As part of their job was swimming in the river, it was normal for them to see each other in bathing suits, even naked occasionally, but Justin blinked as he saw a nude man waving up at him from out of the photo.

“Almost done,” Neville said, grinning cheekily. “What do you think?”

Justin looked closer and realized the photograph was of an unfinished painting in which a man lounged in front of a backdrop of moving water. The man was a fairly good depiction of Justin and the backdrop was clearly the office river wall.

“Good likeness,” Justin said, and the version of him in the picture gave him the finger. He’d modeled for Neville a couple months ago during one particularly dull night shift they’d shared and Neville had promised him a copy of the finished product — one that wasn’t moving so he could give it to Quinn.

Neville stood again. “I’ll send it to you soon as it’s finished. Sorry it’s taken so long.”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea in the first place,” Justin said, shooing him away and setting fire to the photo. “Oh, do you have the de-acquifier?”

“Yeah, here,” Neville reached into the pocket of his trunks and tossed him a black, egg-shaped object, then vanished through the door Doris had left through.

The de-aquifier was something they used at work, frequently. It could absorb massive amounts of liquid and came in useful when they needed to empty out a small section of river or if they wanted to dry off after a swimming shift. He was confident it wouldn’t remove the ink, but it still might be too aggressive for such a delicate object so to test it, he pulled a piece of paper towards him and wetted it with his wand. Then, carefully, slowly, he lowered the egg to the damp surface.

Upon impact, the egg throbbed like a beating organ and the paper began to crinkle in rippling waves. At the same time, the smoldering flames from the photograph whisked across the desk to the egg as well, singeing his fingers. He released the de-aquifier, cursing, and felt through his drawers for a jar of salve. He should have known better than to try that near an open flame; water and fire, though distinctly different in natural forms, reacted to magic in surprisingly similar ways. Unsurprising, as they were the most magical elements.

As his hands healed, he leaned back, pondering his next move. The paper was intact with almost negligible surface damage, but there had been too much movement for his liking during the absorption process. Apply that to a full book, and an old book at that, and he was sure there’d be more serious consequences.

“What’d you do to yourself?”

He looked up to see Doris pointing to his pink hands. “Ah, just trying something. The shipment off?”

“Finally,” she moaned. “I swear, night shifts are the most tedious experiences I’ll ever go through. Give me a library and a cup of tea any day. Oh, and the paper’s arrived. Want one?” She tossed him a folded wad of newsprint.

Uneasily, he saw the heading “PHOENIX STRIKES AGAIN, HERRINGTON HALL LIBRARY UP IN FLAMES.” This made the seventh house the thief had set on fire over the years. Of course, there were countless other houses he was suspected of having robbed, but the burnings were what he was known for. The first had happened five years previously; cornered in a manor house near Southend-on-Sea with the entire improper use of magic squad and a handful of aurors bearing down on him, the man had set fire to the estate and by the time the flames were cleared, had vanished. Justin wouldn’t have been bothered about the news, except the Phoenix was a book thief. He was way beyond Justin’s league of thievery, but having such a high-profile thief in his field made it hard to go unnoticed when the country was on high alert.

The under-fold had a nice review of Charrington’s Hex Set, though, which cheered him up nicely. Pulling out his wand, he sliced it out of the paper and sent it soaring over to tack itself up on the wall beside a dozen other reviews and a running list of all the books members of the office owned, or at least were willing to loan out to each other.

“Nice one,” Neville said approvingly as he reentered, fully dressed, and spotted the new review.

“You know I caught him in the love cave with Alex when I arrived,” Doris said out of the corner of her mouth. There were hundreds of little caves along the underground rivers, most of them unmapped and plenty even they, who patrolled the rivers daily, were unaware of.

Justin laughed. “What were you doing in the love cave?”

“Well, he was late and his trunks were gone, so I figured he’d started on patrol without me!” Doris said defensively. “God, my eyes will never recover. You come at it around the bend, right?” She made a crook with her arm to indicate the direction of the river. “And then you pop up in the middle of the cave, so it wasn’t like I had any warning.”

“But you know what people use that place for — that’s why we call it the ‘love cave.’”

Apart from their passion for books and public libraries, the six coworkers all had robust sex lives and were invariably recounting their more adventurous activities, and occasionally happening upon them.

“I thought Alex was taking a break from guys, though,” Justin said.

Doris shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I didn’t stick around to ask questions. I’m headed back in, though. You need anything?”

He shook his head and looked over at Neville. He seemed to be engrossed in paperwork, and Doris was disappearing into the other room, so, quietly as he could, he recalled the book, letting it phlump gently into his hands before lowering it to the desk. Close as they were, he didn’t want any of his coworkers thinking he was the Phoenix.

Gazing at the still-glistening pages gave him no insight however, and he was on the point of giving up and just going with a hot air charm when his eyes landed on the text of the page it was open to:

… _with blood, wine, or water. These kinds of charms are moderately advanced for the average spell-caster, but easy to master with a foundation in vanishing theory. The challenging nature of these comes from the separating out of the liquid from the host and is made still more challenging if the liquids have bonded to the host in some way. As of the date of this edition, there have been eighteen spells discovered that can achieve this affect, all of which may be found in Keller’s_ Power over the Vanished _, a summative text on the most advanced forms of vanishing._

He stared for a moment more at these words, then hastily vanished the book again. The newspaper beneath was soaked through with water.

“ _Evanesco_ ,” he whispered pointing at it, but the whole paper vanished, water and all. It seemed you really did need a separate charm for this. _Power over the Vanished_ was a text all his books so far had mentioned and was already on his list of To-Be-Stolen. He knew there was a copy at a manor house in Somerset, thanks to his friend Bess who’d served as an apprentice cook last year, traveling between manor houses in the southwest.

It would be a risk, for several reasons. For one, he’d be committing a theft days after one in which he’d nearly been caught; for another, the Daily Prophet had just published a headline story warning the public against book thieves; and for a third, the book would have to stay vanished until he could work out the new charm, every hour decreasing the likelihood it would come back at all. Tomorrow he had work and then his family came for his birthday dinner. Then he’d have to spend the morning breaking in to get the book and, once he had it, finding the proper spell. So it would be at least a day and a half before he could recall it again. But he was reasonable sure he could do it. He’d once left a full English vanished for a whole fortnight and recalled it still piping hot, but he thought he’d better familiarize himself with the book as an object just to be safe.

He recalled the book once again, called farewell to Neville, and disapparated. Back in his flat, he flipped quickly but gently through the book, grateful for the muggle camera his brother had gotten him last Christmas so he’d have some visual record to boost his recall, then, for the final time, he vanished the book.


	4. Quinn

Quinn left Justin’s apartment, cheeks burning. She’d never been embarrassed with him before, not really, but she’d also never been so unsure of what to say. It had been when she was buying his present that the idea came to her. The present was an intimate item and was, she supposed, a representation of how open he was with her. And not just physically — he had shared his apartment with her, introduced her to his siblings and parents, even confessed his crimes to her. It made her feel not a little guilty for concealing her life so entirely from him — her family, her abilities, her habits… And so, as she had watched the shopkeeper box up the gift, something inside of her had given way and she had resolved to tell him, for better or worse.

But then, once you committed to it, how did you go about telling your muggle boyfriend that you were actually a witch? She seemed to remember stammering out that she wanted to ‘share’ something with him after his birthday, so maybe she’d just come out with it over dinner. He’d have his birthday in blissful ignorance and then have his reality crash down around him once his girlfriend was back in town, and then for her birthday, which was just over a week later, he could tell her it was too much and he was breaking up with her. Maybe her parents would have some idea of how to go about it, but her father would probably just tell her to get it over with and if it went badly to just wipe the poor boy’s memory. Her mother would probably nod and say it was for the best.

She didn’t bother with washing up when she arrived at her apartment, just crawled straight into bed as scenes played themselves out in her mind; her telling him over breakfast, her telling him in the park, her telling him while her fingers were knuckle-deep in his ass.

The next morning, it took her a while to return to consciousness. She’d woken up with her head at the foot of the bed, which was always a sign that it would be a long, confusing day. Winifred, her manager, was not impressed by her apparently “hostile” expression, and Quinn didn’t have the energy to come up with a creative retort, so she nodded dutifully and forced on a tight smile as customers began filing down the steps.

She was on the floor today and despite her grogginess, was managing to do a pretty reasonable trade with a dozen bottles sold before lunch time. She was at the point of wondering if she could make it to Diagon Alley and back in her half-hour break when she caught sight of a tall and well-built man who had stopped next to the case of _La Flamme_ and was eyeing it with wonder.

“The celebrated 1735 claret,” she said easily, stepping up behind him. “Which fetched 7,000 galleons at the last auction. These three bottles are among the last of its vintage in the world.”

“Why is it so opaque?” he asked, eyes still on the bottles. He had a deep, confident voice, with vowels that sounded like Norfolk to Quinn.

“We’re not sure,” Quinn admitted and came to stand level with him. “It likely has something to do with its magical properties, though some have suggested it’s not actually wine at all but blood of some sort.”

That got him to turn around. “Blood? Like, human blood?”

She laughed. “Hopefully not. It’s unlikely that it is blood, but if it were it would probably be dragon. A common enough thing to see dragon blood smuggled in wine bottles, though not so much at the time.”

“And its magical properties?” he asked, almost professionally, Quinn thought, as he turned back to the case.

“Legends are all we have to go by. The wards on the bottles prevent us from actually analyzing the liquid and the second we lower them to try, they’re likely to come into effect, having been sealed so long. As you pointed out, the liquid is quite opaque which could indicate explosive or combustive qualities, so we really don’t want to take any chances.”

“Hm.” He gazed at them a moment more, then raised a hand as if he meant to take one down from the case.

“Sir—” she said warningly, but he withdrew his hand a moment later, waving it as though he’d been burned. “There are wards protecting the bottles as well, from theft and the like.”

“Of course,” he murmured. Then he turned to her again. “I heard the wine shop in Diagon Alley had some bottles of this stuff once, but they were…?”

“Stolen, yes,” she nodded. “It is a famous and expensive vintage so it is unsurprising that thieves should target it, but we are stringent in our security and have increased it considerably since that theft.”

“Of course,” he said again. “I wonder.” Then he shook himself slightly and smiled. “I’m actually not here about wine but hoping to catch a moment with a witch who works here. I believe her name is Quinn Attwater?”

Quinn was almost jolted out of her sleepy mood in surprise. Almost. “Well, that would be me. What can I do for you?”

He beamed good-naturedly down at her. “Excellent. I’m actually a historian and I’m doing research for an article I hope to publish in an anthology dedicated to Professor Bathilda Bagshot coming out next year. I had hoped to be rather further along than I am, but it’s proving tricky finding the sources I need and a friend put me in touch with your father—”

Quinn almost rolled her eyes. Of course. Another bleeding soul her parents were inviting to stay. Last year it had been two exchange students from Greece, the year before it had been a truly ancient philosopher who had occupied the attic room for a full two months and never left it, even at meal times. There had already been a number of apprentices in this and that who had passed through this year, and now—

“and he kindly invited me to visit Attwater House. The library has, I gather, some excellent letters from the medieval sorceress Althea to her aunt in Tuscany.”

“I’m sure we do,” Quinn said, trying not to lose her professionalism, but failing to entirely conceal the bored edge to her voice. “I assume he suggested you travel there with me?”

“If that is agreeable,” he said quickly.

“Of course. My portkey’s scheduled for nine o’clock this evening. I could meet you here outside the shop at, say, ten of?”

“I really do appreciate it.”

The man looked like he wanted to say more, but Winifred had just swept down from the balcony, full of the sort of smile that is warm and friendly to a customer’s eyes and cold and sharp to an employee’s. “Ah, I see Quinn is showing you the pride of our little establishment,” they said, wafting their way between the two. “If you’re interested in wines with a little history, sir, may I direct you to our 1844 cabernet, which was given as a gift to broker peace between—”

“I’m afraid I’m not buying today,” the man said hastily. “Although I do appreciate your collection.”

Winifred smiled and nodded understandingly as he backed away and made for the door, before turning on Quinn.

“My parents sent him,” Quinn said before Winifred could begin berating her. “I was just about to head him from _La Flamme_ to the 1967 claret when he told me. I’ve never met him before.”

“Well,” Winifred said, deflating slightly. “Perhaps you should let your parents know that when you are here you are working and not available for social calls.”  
  
“Yes, Winifred.” Quinn bowed her head and her manager stalked off.

“It’s your break time anyway,” her watch said crossly, but quietly enough that Winifred didn’t hear.

“You’re getting less useful by the minute,” Quinn told it. “Between my irritable boss and muggle boyfriend I haven’t got time for a sassy watch.”

“Twenty-eight minutes,” was all the watch said in reply, a slight smugness to its tone.

She saw Alice in the front shop on her way out and decided, since she wasn’t going to make it to Diagon Alley at this rate, to stop and chat. There wasn’t anyone in the front shop, but the street outside was full of muggles so Quinn got straight to the point.

“I’m thinking of telling my boyfriend I’m a witch.”

“I tried that once,” Alice said. “Didn’t work so well, though, when I couldn’t even levitate a wineglass.” Quinn really did roll her eyes now, and Alice grew serious. “Well, you obviously know him a hell of a lot better than I do, so at the end of the day you should do whatever your gut’s telling you. It’s always good to do it in a low-pressure setting, and privately of course, for legal reasons apart from anything else.” Quinn nodded. “But honestly, Quinn, from what my friends have said it’s not as big of a deal as you’d think. Worst that happened was my friend Barney got pushed in a lake because his girlfriend thought he was catching fire when he tried to show her some magic.”

“That’s not so bad,” Quinn said, thinking that only a fool would use fire as a first example of magic.

“You thinking of doing it soon?” Alice asked, boredly pouring herself a glass of white.

“Soon as I’m back from my parents’. I’ll let you know how he takes it.”

“Please do. Given what I do know about him it’ll either be a great story or he’ll swallow it with no questions asked. He’s an open minded one, and they always take it the best.”

That was definitely true, Quinn thought, and this comforted her through the rest of the day as she continued to brew over different ways of breaking the news to Justin. At the end of her shift she headed home to pack a bag and have some dinner before apparating back to the shop to meet the historian.

The shop was still open — it didn’t close till nine — and she found him waiting inside, perusing the muggle offerings. They conversed blandly for a few minutes, then headed back into the staff room, not bothering to go through the entrance to the Gallery. They were out of sight of any muggles and that was enough. It was only once they were both clutching the torn sock serving as their portkey that she realized the historian had never given his name.


	5. Justin

“There you go,” Neville said, handing him a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper.

“Aw, I didn’t get you anything,” Justin said, shaking it.

Neville rolled his eyes. “It’s the finished painting, idiot. Well, a picture of it. It took me some time to figure out how to use the muggle camera but we got there in the end.”

“Hey, thanks Nev.” Justin held the package more carefully now, feeling the ridges of a frame under his fingers and a bump that might have been a hook. “She’ll love this.”

“And she won’t be at all jealous of you disrobing in front of your colleagues?”

Justin shoved him into the river. As Neville was already wearing his trunks, this didn’t matter much, but he gestured rudely at Justin all the same. After setting the picture down on his desk, well away from the water, Justin went to change into his own swim suit and then dove in after Neville.

They sped off through the glowing water, the current carrying them easily along the underground tunnel, looping them around corners and tossing them over treacherous rock formations. Using a few simple spells they were able to control their speed and swing themselves out of the current whenever they wanted to stop at a cave or pin a grindylow against the wall. It was the first patrol of the day, so there weren’t many creatures to round up and no one was out swimming — even the love cave was empty. Without much to do, they fell back on their favorite pastimes and soon Neville was sending multicolored lights rippling through the water and Justin was trying to see how fast he could make himself go around the twisty turns of the passage.

After one particularly sharp turn, he was thrown out of the current and into a mess of viney water weeds growing little black pods like sea skate egg sacks without the tendrils. He clawed his way out of them, shivering at the feeling of the slimy bands clinging to his skin. A minute later Neville had caught up with him.

“Ugh, what is this stuff?” he asked Neville. “There were a few weeds here last week but this,” he gestured at the tangled mass, “is definitely new.”

Neville eyed it with the professional interest of an herbologist-in-training. “Not sure,” he said eventually. “It’s not invasive so we shouldn’t worry about it.”

Justin mumbled something about it cramping his style, but followed Neville as they went on to check the outermost caves of this branch before the river surfaced in London proper.

“Not a tentacle fan, then?” Neville asked eventually, trailing a finger down Justin’s side.

For answer he rolled his eyes. Everyone in the office was intimately familiar with the story of Neville wanking in the arms of the venomous tentacula at school. He claimed he’d never do something so dangerous now he was no longer a horny teenager but, as Doris rightly pointed out, he was still mostly a horny teenager, even at 24.

The way back to the office was never as fun because you had to cast a continual spell of current reversal around yourself or you’d just end up swimming in place. Eventually, they arrived and tumbled, exhausted, out onto the floor of the office and began drying off in preparation of the next hour’s paperwork.

Even with the arrival of Doris and Eva, the other day shift workers of the day, time ground on pathetically slowly. Perhaps it was the anticipation of his birthday dinner, or his curiosity at what Quinn had given him, or that he wouldn’t see her for two nights, but mostly, Justin thought, it was the excited anxiety of waiting for the theft tomorrow.

He had the basic layout from his friend Bess and from Google Maps — yes, he might be a wizard but muggle tech had its uses — and the plan was basically: go in through the bathroom window, grab the book, and get out again. According to Bess, the bathroom was only feet away from the garden wall, which was crumbling anyway and not maintained either physically or magically as far as she could tell. The only thing he had to worry about was if his alarm freezing spell would work on their wards. In his experience it was hit or miss — it worked about 70% of the time, but if they didn’t keep up the wall, he was hoping their wards would be old enough for his spells to work.

At the end of his shift, he and Neville said goodbye to Doris and Eva, and went to the foyer to disapparate. Neville gave him a last wink and glance at the package as he disappeared.

In his apartment, Justin set the package on a shelf where he hoped Quinn wouldn’t find it and began preparing dinner for his family. The rice and chicken mixture would be about an hour in the oven and his sisters and parents weren’t due to arrive for another half hour after that, so, giving in to temptation, he went into his bedroom and pulled out the box Quinn had left for him. He shook it again and was rewarded by a thumping sound that could have been anything. Slowy, he lifted the lid and looked inside.

Something long and purple met his eyes and for a moment he wondered if she had gotten him another dildo, but then he saw the straps pooled around the base of the box with holes to adjust them around Quinn’s thighs. He let out a long, low breath and reached in to pull the toy out. The shaft was long, longer than his dildo but not so long that he didn’t think he couldn’t take it. It felt firm and rubbery in his hand and he smoothed his cupped palm down it, imagining it penetrating him. It wasn’t just that he enjoyed the feeling, it was that this implied some participation from Quinn who, until now, had mostly stuck to using her hands on him. She would probably still be fully clothed and would probably be taking him from behind so he wouldn’t feel the need to touch her, but it would still be her rocking into him.

“Gah,” he said unintelligibly. His cock had stiffened considerably during the unwrapping and was begging to be unwrapped itself so he complied, shucking his pants and underpants and circling his fingers loosely around his grateful penis. Before he began stroking in earnest he pulled the flesh-colored ring from his left middle finger. The second it was off it became pliant and bendy like an elastic band so that it fit easily over his penis but stayed snug all the way to the base where he left it. It wasn’t exactly like a muggle condom because the vanishing spell was confined to the ring itself and prevented the semen from passing down his cock at all. The result was that his orgasm, when it came, was not only clean but dry; the sensations were not of liquid pulsing out of him but only his super-charged skin melting in ecstatic spasms as his hand forced itself back and forth, riding out the wave.

He collapsed backwards on his bed, hearing the oven grumbling and pedestrians outside yelling at each other. The purple strap-on lay beside him and he gazed at it, wondering what Quinn’s family would think if they knew about it, knowing how his family would squawk if they saw it. Maybe that was what she wanted to share with him; maybe she wanted him to meet her family. After all, she had met his and they’d been dating for two months now. Hell, she’d given him an expensive looking strap-on; things seemed fairly serious. He slipped the ring off his curled up penis and put it back on his finger where it became metal-like once more. Then he got up to dress and hide the toy as completely as possible so his family could never, ever happen across it. Maybe he’d vanish it for the evening.


	6. Quinn

Light streamed out from the ornately carved wooden doorway and the faces of Quinn’s parents, groomed and immaculate, beamed down at them.

“Quinn, darling,” her mother said, swooping down on her. “And, Charles,” she said, with the air of greeting a favorite uncle. “Do come in! Shoes on the right and coat where ever you like. Lucky will take care of it for you — she’s our house-elf, though, of course, she’s paid. We were one of the first to switch to the new system, even before the House-Elf Wage Decrees were passed.” She went on and on and Quinn, seeing no reason to distract her from her new pet, or to save him from her banter for he seemed graciously interested as he looked around the hall, kissed her father on the cheek and dragged her bag up the stairs to her room just off the balcony.

Lucky was waiting for her, pretending to tidy but there was clearly nothing left to clean; the bed was stiff with new linens, the blankets folded neatly at the base; the windows were sparkling in the light of three long-lasting candles standing in their own shining brackets on the walls; and a plate of Lucky’s famous oatmeal cookies was perched on her bedside table.

“Hullo, Lucky,” she said tiredly.

“Miss Quinn,” Lucky squeaked. “Did you have a pleasant journey?”

“It was alright. We’ve got some new bloke — a historian — who’ll be staying. He seems alright, though.”

“I will see to it he enjoys his stay.”

Quinn raised her eyebrows and flopped down onto the bed. “Oh I’m sure you will. Thanks for the cookies. How’ve they been since July?”

Lucky began taking things out of the bag Quinn had dropped on the floor and sending clothes flying across the room to hang themselves in the wardrobe. “A little quiet, a little lonely, but happy. Having company will do them good, and will give me something to do.”

“You should have them take on another maid or cook — you liked training the last one, didn’t you?” Lucky nodded and Quinn for the hundredth time reminded herself to tell her parents to get Lucky to start an official school or apprenticeship. “Ah, Lucky,” she sighed and lay back fully on the warm sheets. “I know you like it here, but I don’t know if I’m going to last the visit.”

“It’s only one day,” Lucky said reprimandingly, but her eyes twinkled.

In the morning, Quinn dressed and went down to find her parents already at the kitchen table, Lucky frying eggs at the stove.

“Good morning, darling,” her father said over the newspaper. “Charles has already been through so you can take his place.”

“Settled in well, then, has he?” Quinn grumbled.

Her mother looked at her reprovingly. “He’s in the study and make sure you don’t disturb him. He’s here under important Ministry business.”

“I’m sure it’s very important,” Quinn said through a mouthful of toast, putting the slightest sarcastic lilt on the word ‘very.’ Luckily, her mother didn’t notice. Her eggs, however, hit her plate with a hard slap, letting her know that Lucky had.

Her father let out a loud ‘harrumph’ and tossed the paper aside. “First rate institution indeed,” he muttered darkly. Then looked up at Quinn as a fresh set of eggs hit his plate. “Darling, I think there was something you wanted to talk to us about?”

“Oh, yes,” her mother chimed in, setting her fork down and eyeing Quinn beadily. “Was this to do with that boyfriend of yours? Because we, your father and I,” here she reached across the table to clasp his hand, “absolutely approve and will support you in any way we can. It’s not easy being married to a muggle,” she went on sagely, and her father nodded heavily. “But Mary Mephulint married a barrister from Liverpool, and Charity Cheeseworth has been married to her husband for twenty-three years. Of course, he’s a squib, but it comes to the same thing doesn’t it?” Quinn’s father nodded again.

“Uh, yes, it’s about him,” Quinn said, when it seemed like her mother had officially stopped speaking. “I was thinking about telling him, you know, about magic. About how—”

“Oh well of course!” her mother exclaimed. “How wonderful!”

“It’s a brave and necessary step,” her father added, spearing a strawberry from the fruit salad.

“But don’t you see what this means, Hector?” her mother said. “It means she’s serious. It means he’s important to her! Oh, Quinn, darling, this is such exciting news. I’ll have Lucky prepare a cake for this evening to celebrate. Lucky?”

“Yes, Miss, the chocolate with fire mint,” Lucky said at once.

“A fine choice.” Her mother took a breath to continue but Quinn cut across her.

“I really don’t want a fuss.” Her father set down his fork gravely as if she’d just announced that someone had died. “I just wondered if…if you had any ideas of how to break the news, you know?”

Her father’s face bounced back almost comically. “You hear that, Abigail? She want our advice, as if we old fools know anything about modern love.”

“Come, Hector,” her mother said, task focused, “there must be something you can think of. Dear, how is he with shocks?”

“Um,” Quinn said.

“It’s not the shock to be worried about, Abigail, it’s whether or not he believes her,” her father said, patiently. “Imagine if I told you I was buying a chimera for the back garden. You’d laugh yourself silly!”

“I don’t know. I remember when you were younger you had quite the exotic side,” her mother returned slyly. “But you’re right. You need some way of convincing him without scaring him off.” Then she clapped her hand to her forehead. “Of course! _Spellman’s Basic Home Decor_! Remember those stars we put on your ceiling when you were about four?”

“No?” Quinn said, having nearly given up all hope for the conversation.

“Just nice twinkling stars, in the early pages. The book has all sorts of unobtrusive ways to improve your decoration. That’s got to be the mildest introduction to magic I can think of, wouldn’t you say, dear?”

Slowly, Quinn nodded. “You know Mother, that might actually be perfect. Thanks.”

“There should still be a copy in the library — under Spellman, remember. Not the Syllabary.”

Quinn excused herself, exchanged an exasperated look with Lucky, and went down the hall to the library, a little, dark-paneled room lined with books. A small fire was burning in the grate and the mantel was artfully piled with yet more books as well as a few statues of Greek nymphs quietly singing a love ballad. She trailed a hand along the shelves, passing Qs and Rs before she found the book her mother had mentioned. Flipping casually through it, she saw a handful of spells that might be useful but none she wasn’t familiar with so she put it back on the shelf.

Her watch croaked out sleepily: “It’s not even lunchtime yet.”

“Oh, good to know.” She pulled out a book on magical vineyards of Northern Europe and settled into one of the squashy dragon-hide chairs next to the fire to read.


	7. Justin

Justin couldn’t see much of the manor from the street. It wasn’t one with big, bountiful grounds — those had probably been sold off sometime in the last few centuries and the city had crept in until it was almost on top of the house. This little dead-end road was cut across by the crumbling garden wall his friend Bess had mentioned, and he could clear the garden easily in a few strides. This didn’t make the house itself any less magnificent, not that he could appreciate its true grandeur from this angle. All he had to go on was the bathroom window and whatever room stood above it, but that was all he needed. In and out, no time for sightseeing.

He clenched his wand between his teeth for easy access, braced his hands on the stone and then vaulted over. He breathed a sigh of relief as he hit the wall of the house; the grounds had remained silent which meant the alarms had almost certainly been fooled by his counter-spells. His second piece of luck came as the window opened at a simple _alohomora_ and he pulled himself up and into a small, marble bathroom. He almost tumbled into the deep bathtub set just under the window and only saved himself by doing a half-split across its wide rim.

“Dear, I don’t think that’s the proper—” began the mirror, but Justin sent a jinx across the room that silenced it.

“Whew,” he whispered to himself. “We’re in.” Beyond the door, the hall seemed to be deserted though he could hear voices and what sounded like the clattering of pots and pans. In two quick steps he was across the hall and in the opposite room, closing the door quietly behind himself. The library had an impressive collection. He could already see several valuable works by E.S. Struple. He also saw a book by Edwardus Lima who, he remembered, had written the vicious textbook _The Monster Book of Monsters_ he’d been assigned in his third year at Hogwarts. He steered clear of this one. As he made his way along the shelves, he noticed that there was an unusual number of empty spaces and when he finally reached the place where _Power over the Vanished_ should have been, he found another empty gap.

“Shit!” he hissed, frantically searching for a sign it had been mis-shelved. Who in their right minds would take out _Power over the Vanished_ for bedtime reading? There were a few books on the only table in the room, but none of these had anything to do with vanishing spells. He went back to the door, grinding his teeth and intending to just call it a day and try again some other time perhaps, or see if he could miraculously locate another copy in the next few days, but as he stepped back into the hall he found the bathroom door closed. Had he closed it behind himself? No, wasn’t that the sound of running water? “Shit!” he hissed again, but then he paused. There was another door open next to the library and through it he could see a large desk stacked high with books. Did he dare risk it?

He glanced once more at the bathroom door, then snuck inside the other room. There it was, on the very top of the pile. And underneath: _Charms for the Vanished_ , _Vanity and Vanishment_ , _When Objects Disappear_ , _Apparition and Vanishing Spells_. Justin couldn’t help himself; he knelt down beside the desk and hugged the stack of books, breathing in their musty book smell in the same way he breathed in the smell of Quinn’s shampoo when they hugged. “I can’t take you all,” he muttered to the books, stroking their leather and gold leaf spines, “but some day I will find you again.” He gave them a last squeeze, then swept _Power over the Vanished_ into his bag and crept back out of the room.

The door of the bathroom was still closed, but he couldn’t hear any sound even when he pressed his ear against it. Slowly, so slowly, he eased it open to peer inside. Unfortunately, before he could see more than the sink, he heard footsteps behind him, coming directly down the hall towards him. He had no choice; he thrust inside and shut the door sharply behind himself.

The man in the tub looked up in mild surprise and grinned lazily at Justin’s mortified expression.

“Sorry for the wait, sir,” came the squeaky voice of the manor’s house-elf outside the door. “I have your tea here.”

“Can it wait?” the man said, his eyes not leaving Justin’s.

“I’m afraid not, sir. I need to check the windows anyway. Something has tripped the alarm.”

“Ah, very good. Come in then.” Both Justin and the man in the tub glanced about and then the man looked up, shrugged, and gestured to the bath.

“Shit,” Justin swore for the third time. Making sure to vanish his bag with _Power over the Vanished_ in it first, he climbed over the rim of the tub and dropped down beneath the water.

He had miscalculated the depth of the tub, which was deep enough that the man, with just his shoulders out of the water, was standing comfortably upright. Justin’s momentum and water-clogged clothes dragged him right to the bottom where he struggled to right himself. When he’d gotten himself into a kneeling position he was able to better take in the muted sounds of the man’s and house elf’s conversation. He was distracted somewhat as he came face to face with a prodigious penis. It didn’t curl against the body like Justin’s but swayed openly in the sloshing water and was easily longer in this flaccid form than Justin’s was at full mast. He backed away as much as the confines of the admittedly enormous tub would allow and waited for a signal that it was ok to surface again.

He only had to wait another few seconds before there was a tap on his head and he stood, sputtering and wiping suds from his eyes.

“So, you want to tell me about it?” the man asked, still with that coy smile.

“Not really.”

The man shrugged. “Fair enough. I have towels there if you care for one.” He pointed at a basket of crisp, white towels on the counter, but Justin shook his head, wondering if the man was hitting on him. “In that case,” the man said, shrugging again and offering him a leg up. Justin stepped into his interlaced fingers and dived out the window with as much grace as he could manage.

It was only a few minutes before he was back home again, still completely bemused by the strange turn his home invasion had taken. He was just about to dive into his new book when he heard the telltale scratching at the window that meant an owl was trying to get in. Sighing, he shut the book and looked around to see which room it was at, but then he heard another sound: the door of the apartment opening. Merlin’s pants, he needed to put that intruder alarm up.

“I thought you weren’t back until late tonight,” he called, shoving the book and his wand under his mattress and looking desperately out the window for the sign of a wing. He straightened as casually as he could as Quinn entered the room.

“I was done,” she said, smiling. She had a strangely purposeful look about her, and Justin remembered that she had said she wanted to talk. Eyes still flickering to the windows, he steered her onto the bed so she was facing away from both the bedroom windows. Then he pulled up his desk chair and tried to look attentive. “Listen,” she began, “I talked to my parents…”

He covered her clasped hands with one of his own. “It’s fine. I would love to meet them.”

Her head twitched back and a slight furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “Oh.”

The reaction was so completely opposite of what Justin expected that he momentarily forgot about the owl. “Was that…not what you were going to ask?” he said slowly.

“No, no that’s exactly what I—I was just surprised that you knew.” Now she was just as flustered as he was, but he had no brain space to ponder it because a large, feathery shape had just flown into view outside the far window and with a loud _tap_ it pecked sharply on the glass. “What—?” Quinn said, turning, but Justin, panicking, pulled her up and into the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

“I wanted to get you a drink,” he said, inventing wildly and pulling down a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“You’re excited about this?” she asked. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied keeping an eye on the window with the owl in it and pouring their drinks he would have wondered why she sounded so bewildered.

“Of course. It’s a big deal.” Another tap. He spoke louder, trying to drown it out. “Now we’ll have both met each other’s families!”

“Well ok then,” she said uncertainly. “What was that noise?”

“Oh, it’s just kids throwing pebbles at the windows,” he said airily.

“Do you want me to go tell them to shove off?”

He stopped. “Actually, yes! That would be great — but go outside, don’t stick your head out the window; you’ll get hit.” And he shooed her out the door.

Quick as a flash, he had the window open, the package off the owl’s leg, and the window closed again. Tearing the package open, he saw a moving naked leg and realized the owl had brought him Neville’s finished painting of him. Because of course, what he needed right now was another incriminating magical artifact while his muggle girlfriend was trying to get serious with him. He stuffed it, wrapping and all, under the mattress with the book and his wand just as Quinn came back into the apartment.

  
“They must have run off cause I didn’t see anyone,” she said, shrugging.

“Oh well,” he said, trying to slow his breathing down to a normal tempo. He handed her one of the glasses. “Here. To meeting your family.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling into her wine.


	8. Quinn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story is getting real messy, sorry not sorry :P

Shit, had she really just agreed to introduce him to her family? How was she supposed to tell him now? Could she tell him now? Wouldn’t that be too much? But how on earth was he supposed to meet her family if he didn’t know?

“Are you alright?” Justin asked, putting down his empty glass, and Quinn realized they’d been silent for the full two minutes it took to finish the wine.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m…happy you’re so excited to meet my family. It’ll just be awkward — because they’re awkward.” That was better; he looked less suspicious now. “I mean, they’re rich. They have a big house and everything.” She shut her mouth before she went overboard and refilled her glass.

Justin shook his head, smiling. “I don’t mind. You know my parents have a good amount of money themselves.”

“Sure, but not like nobility-wealthy.” The british muggles had a weird thing about nobility and wealth that, as she understood it, was somewhat similar to the wizard obsession with ‘pure blood.’ “And they’re not…” She took a sip, searching for the word. “Entertainers. My family can — and _will_ — talk your ear off for literal hours.”

“So, was that why you took off work tomorrow? You wanted us to…go up there for the day?”

Oh shit. “Yeah…” Why was she agreeing with this?? In reality, she’d taken the day off because he already had the day off and, as it was just after his birthday, she thought he might like to spend a lazy day in the apartment, trying out her present, making fun of passersby on the street outside, playing that ridiculous muggle game Twister that he liked so much.

He looked at her. She was being suspicious again. Maybe she could turn off his brain for a bit if she got his trousers off. She led him back to the bed and hopped up, crosslegged, onto the mattress.

“Well, should I dress fancy, then?” he asked. “What are they expecting?”

“Hey,” she said, putting her hands on either side of his face. “It’s your birthday. You get to dress however you like. And they’ll love you, even if you showed up in your Green Day underwear and a I Love London tank top.”

He seemed to relax at that and permitted her to plant a soft kiss on his lips. She sat back, hands folded in her laps and tried to gauge if he was in a sexy mood when she heard a muffled voice say:

“Grocery closes in twenty minutes.” Justin’s eyes shot open like lamplights.

_Fuck fuck fuck!_ Her _fucking_ watch was going down the toilet after this. How could she have forgotten to take it off? Scrambling, she glanced as casually as she could at the window behind her. “What was that?”

“I—” Justin looked like a cat that had been stepped on. “I don’t know. Must have been someone outside.”

“Yes. Of course,” Quinn said, one hand pressed over her wrist to muffle any further comments. Then, unable to bear it, she jumped up. “I had better be going. I—I’ve got to tell my family you’ll be coming!” Shit, she did, didn’t she?

“Of course,” he agreed, also standing up. They rushed to the door in a whirl of confused goodbyes, and I’ll see you in a few hours, and don’t be too lates.

Outside, she took the biggest breath she’d taken in days and tore the watch from her wrist.

“You, my friend,” she told it, “have some serious penance to do.”

Five minutes later, she opened the door to her apartment and groaned as she heard the sound of her roommate’s workout music. Knowing she had about two hours before Justin expected her back, she decided to shower now so her hair would have time to dry while she made herself some supper. She walked to the bathroom, politely stepping over her roommate, Philip, who was doing crunches in the kitchen, and turned on the shower jet to full blast. There was nothing like a warm shower to wash your stress away.

When she emerged, feeling much refreshed, Philip was still at it, looking like his upper body was bouncing off the hardwood. He sat up when she passed, sweat dripping down his aggressively chiseled torso.

“Back from kinky sex with the boyfriend?” he asked, mopping his face with a towel.

She gave him a scornful look. “ _You’re_ the exhibitionist.”

He puppy-dogged at that. “That was one time! It was an _accident,_ and I thought you didn’t mind.”

“Not when it was Jack you were dating,” she smirked. “You, I could see less of.” He threw his sweaty towel at her and she hissed, but relented, passing it back with dignity as he left to take his own shower.

She smiled as the image of him plowing into Jack on the living room sofa came back to her, then shook herself and pulled a sheet of paper towards her and dipped her quill in the ink pot. Now how best to tell her parents that her muggle boyfriend, who was still unaware of the existence of magic, was coming to dinner…


	9. Justin

The second the door closed behind Quinn, Justin bolted it and ran back to the bedroom, ripping the painting out from under the mattress.

“What the fuck?” he said to the little naked version of himself.

“What?” the painted Justin said, covering a yawn.

“You nearly blew my cover! Quinn about jumped a mile.”

The man yawned again. “I didn’t do anything. But you leave me under a bed without company much longer and I will do something.”

“Don’t make me vanish you,” Justin said, warningly.

“You wouldn’t. You can give me to Quinn once you’ve told her that you’re a wizard and she’ll be delighted. I’ll make much better company than you.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Justin said and stuffed the painting back under the mattress. His painted self did raise an interesting idea, though. He looked down at where the tip of his wand was just poking out, reflecting. Quinn was taking this huge step with introducing him to her family (he could tell it was huge, given how oddly she was acting). Should he be reciprocating? And anyway, if they were getting serious, didn’t she deserve to know who he really was?

He dragged the painting back out again. “Alright. You have an idea of how to tell her?”

The reclining version of himself drew an arm down his body. “Look no further than me, my friend. What says I’m magic better than—”

“Than a moving, nude painting of myself? Thanks,” Justin snorted, tucking him once again out of sight. Still, it was in keeping with the kinky theme of the presents they gave each other… He’d have to think on it. In the meantime, he had a book to save.

He could hear his painting protesting as he lifted the mattress again to fish out the book and his wand, but ignored him. _Maybe I ought to put a silencing charm_ … he thought to himself, but stopped mid-thought as _Power over the Vanished_ fell open on his lap. _Oh shit_. The pages of the book were completely blank. He flipped through the whole thing to be sure, but page after page of empty, brown-stained parchment met his eyes, and he finally slammed it shut in frustration. It was only to be expected that he’d eventually come across a book with this kind of enchantment on it — especially when he was dealing with books on vanishment. Unfortunately, he had no experience with invisible ink, double paper, or moon runes. Alex had given him a book on invisibility charms last year, though. He got up and rummaged about the messy closet where he buried things that might tip Quinn off that he was a wizard.

Their office at the LROC was known for collecting people with odd obsessions. The job wasn’t terribly interesting and paid poorly, but there weren’t many qualifications so it was staffed with young people in their first five to ten years out of Hogwarts, still waiting to break into a research position for their subject of interest. Neville was into herbology, among various other things; Justin was into highly theoretical magic, namely vanishing spells; Doris and Eva were up-and-coming members of the East End theater scene; Susie knew her way around transfiguration spells like the back of her hand; and Alex was a linguist, with a special interest in runes, arithmancy, and magical scripts. The book he’d given Justin was actually one he’d been an assistant editor on. It wasn’t a big book, nor was it terribly complex but…

Justin paused, landing on a page with the incantation for revealing hidden writing.

  
“ _Aparecium_ ,” he muttered, tapping _Power over the Vanished._ It worked; silvery, metallic cursive was spilling across the pages like vines, curling into large initials and bumping out to allow for delicately illustrated hand movements. He let out a sigh of relief and began to page once again through the book, searching. After several chapters, he arrived at a section on ‘liquids and vanishment,’ which began:

_Liquid is often associated with vanishing spells. From Arthurian legend to modern analysis of peat bogs, liquid has been known to lend itself to this type of magic. This section will explore both the liquids that are known to induce vanishment as well as vanishing spells that can be applied to liquid. We begin with a little known liquid that draws on properties of three types of magical fire._

_There are six traditional types of magical fire, these being Fiendfyre (destructive), Gubraithian (everlasting), Floo (for transportation), Revealing Flame (associated with dark objects, such as the Hand of Glory), waterproof fire (a common form of portable fire), and Ghost Flame (a blue flame that absorbs heat, rather than emitting it). There are many magical means of manipulating normal fire, but these six are the only known forms of the element to possess magical qualities. This is not to say that there haven’t been instances where the properties of two or more of these have been combined (for a more extensive exploration of these, see Harpin’s_ Furtive Fires) _. An unnamed alchemist of the 1200s combined the properties of Fiendfyre, Floo, and Revealing Flame, to create what they dubbed ‘the seventh flame.’ Rather than being cast as a spell, this fire, similar to Floo Powder, has a liquid resting state, which, when activated, erupts into flames and vanishes whatever it touches, without causing any lasting damage._

_The process for creating this liquid, as laid out by the 13th century alchemist, is detailed below, though as the method of retrieving items consumed by the ‘seventh flame’ has been lost, the fire no longer offers any practical use._

Justin glanced down the rest of the page. Well, there was no way he could make this fire — it was beyond complicated and more than just spellwork. It didn’t seem like much use to him anyway, though attempting to figure out the method of recall for this type of flame did seem like his kind of project. He bookmarked the passage and read on. Finally, he arrived at a list of a few dozen spells that worked in different ways to vanish various kinds of liquid.

Queasily, he settled on one that was intended to remove blood from a carcass. It was an unpleasant image, but seemed to match his intention better than any of the others. He practiced first on a piece of paper he wetted in the sink and, it working smoothly, he proceeded to recall the still sopping _Here and There_ and, page by page, went through removing the water till the book was as dry and sturdy as it had been when he first slid it of its shelf at Farrell Manor.

Feeling that his success had been rather anticlimactic, he thumbed through _Here and There_ , looking for something exciting he could engage with, something to turn into another invention like his vanishing condom, wondering if he could even find something fun with which to break the news to Quinn that he was actually a wizard. His eyes lighted on a heading: _The Vanishing Pocket_.

It had similar principles to an undetectable extension charm, the sort you’d place on bags or cupboards, but it was an extremely high-level bit of magic. The laws of recall would still apply, of course, so you’d need to know what went in and recall it again before you forgot about it, but… Justin’s eyes widened.

_…the context of location is immaterial; thus, you are able to recall items from the pocket at any location with no reduced chance of success. The Great Wizard Martinez, who invented the spell, placed a block of ice into the pocket during his tour of the Himalayas, and removed it again, unchanged, upon his arrival in Madrid three weeks later._

That really was extraordinary. It blew everything Justin knew about vanishing laws out the window. He kept reading, and his eyes continued to grow. The truly intriguing part of the spell was its affect on living things. As a rule, you _never_ vanished something that was alive. Not only was it incredibly difficult to achieve, it was impossible for the organism to survive no matter how quickly you recalled it. But this spell — Justin’s nose was nearly touching the paper as he stared in amazement at the text — this spell claimed that living things could be put in and out of the vanishing pocket with no harm to them.

God, Justin loved theory. The best thing was that when you read it, it made perfect sense. It was exactly like an extension charm — you chose the opening for the pocket (like the ring was for his semen-vanishing spell), then you warped space into it (like an extension charm), and then you vanished the space. Of course, that meant you could only vanish as much as would fit into the space you’d vanished. It was almost like you were creating a bubble in the void where you could store and recall things from.

Ok, this was happening. Justin leapt from his chair and dived into his closet, looking for anything that might offer an appropriate opening. He pulled out a slipper, which he was pretty sure no longer had a pair, and slammed it onto his desk. Then he rushed into the kitchen to fetch the little jade plant from the windowsill and ran it back to his desk, panting.

It was easy, though how much of that was because he had been up to his ears in high-level vanishing theory for the last few weeks, he wasn’t sure. He swirled the tip of his wand around the inside of the slipper and watched the bottom drop away and the sides balloon outwards. Then, he tapped the rim of the slipper and the walls and now distant sole vanished leaving an empty pit. It wasn’t black, it wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t anything really. He supposed it looked the way something with a muggle-repelling charm on it might look to a muggle: unimportant, featureless.

Without pomp, he swept the tiny jade plant up and dropped it into the void. He let a full minute pass before summoning it back again, and there it was, green and healthy as it had been a minute before. Excited, and perhaps a little dangerously overconfident, he took the slipper off the desk and, holding his breath, dipped his left toes into it. He shivered as he lost contact with them and, half worried they’d fallen off, pulled them quickly back out again. They looked the same. The feeling had rushed back to them as soon as they emerged; it really hadn’t been much different than when your toes went numb from cold and then woke up next to a warm fire.

He could easily have spent the next five hours dropping things in and fetching them out of his new invention, but Quinn could be arriving anytime and he really should wash up before then. He had a feeling tonight might get a little sexy, given the present waiting under his bed. Sighing, he dug out a space for his two new books in the closet, and then began undoing the spell on his slipper.


	10. Quinn

Predictably, her mother sent a patronus. She had probably sent it the moment Quinn’s owl, Iris, had taken flight again, probably hadn’t even finished the letter before conjuring the silver bat that now fluttered in front of Quinn as she stood in the alley outside Justin’s place. Thank god it didn’t arrive five minutes later when she was inside.

“Oh honey, I’m sorry you didn’t manage to talk to him like you planned, but we would of course be _delighted_ to meet this man we’ve heard so much about. Lucky is already freezing the portraits and the mirrors and I’ll put a muggle repelling charm on the library and the study. The dancing silverware—”

“Can’t you, like, skip to the end?” Quinn asked the patronus, who ignored her and plowed on in her mother’s strong voice.

“in the basement, but I’ll have to check to make sure the other set don’t still have the color-changing spell on them from the solstice. Lucky and Charles will of course keep out of the way — Charles is so understanding, dear. It’s a joy to have him with us and his studies are going well, or so he says. But of course, you’re probably busy so I’ll keep this short.” Quinn snorted. “We’ll see you tomorrow, and dear, arrive whenever you like. We’ll be sure to have the place ready by noon just in case you decide to come early. Oh! This will be so exciting. I don’t think there’s ever been a muggle in the house since—”

Quinn nodded to the silver bat and then strode out from the alley and over to the entrance to Justin’s apartment building, leaving the bat to continue its monologue to the alley wall. She let herself in and began climbing the stairs. She felt more relaxed knowing her mother was muggle-proofing the house, but she still felt nervous. If he saw or heard anything he shouldn’t, it could mean the end of their relationship. And if it was bad enough that he needed his memory modified…then she’d have to find some way to break up with him on her own. Maybe she should have just cut him off after the first free glass when he walked into the shop two months ago.

But — she drew a breath and straightened her tie — she was outside his door now and had to put all that aside and focus on having a fun and relaxing evening with her boyfriend. As it was a somewhat celebratory night, she knocked and waited for him to come to greet her.

The door opened to reveal him in stunningly tight-fitting, bright teal underwear and a vest to match. This was one of the many perks of going out with someone who had no roommates.

“Hi,” he said, trading cheek kisses with her as they did when they were being fancy. “Love the tie.”

“You’re quite professional yourself,” she returned, running a finger down the deep v formed by the neck of the vest.

“Come on in. I’ve made fondue.” He shut the door behind her and took her coat while she slipped off her boots. A small pot of melted chocolate sat in the center of the kitchen table with three small bowls of dippings orbiting it. As she took her seat, Justin drawing it out politely for her, she glanced toward the bedroom. Through the open door she could see her present standing erect on Justin’s bed. There was a rush of warmth and wetness between her legs that was quickly whisked away by her charmed underwear, but a tense, excited feeling lingered.

The fondue was delicious — one of these days she was going to have to get him to cook while she was in the apartment so she could learn his secrets — but it didn’t last long. Well, there was still half a bowl left when they gave up, Justin’s lips crashing into her own and his vest ending up dangling from the back of his chair. They stumbled into the bedroom and he fell backwards, pulling her on top of him. He seemed to feel like being horizontal constituted the line between making out and sex because his hands disappeared from her back at that point. She broke away, intending to tell him it was fine but when she looked down at him she saw his eyes were wide and needy and her voice stuck in her throat. She was kneeling over him now so she didn’t need to shift as he rolled over beneath her.

“Take them off?” he asked through the comforter. She did, pulling the elastic of his underwear slowly over his hips and ass and down his legs to where he kicked them off onto the floor.

“Lube?” she asked. Merlin, wouldn’t it be brilliant when — if — he knew she was a witch and she could just slick him with her wand?

“There on the bed, next to the…” He blushed and twisted to point at the strap on.

With her fingers full of the viscous muggle lube, she ran her hand over his ass and slipped it into the cleft between his cheeks, grinning as they tightened around her. She rubbed her fingers up and down over his hole. “Ready?”  
  
“Ready and waiting,” he said, punctuating the last word with a slight jiggle of the hips so that her hand was briefly cupping his left buttock.

She gave it a squeeze and then dipped inside him down to a knuckle. Then again, then a bit deeper. Slowly and gently she worked him open, stopping occasionally to add more lube until his ass was so slippery you could have fired an arrow at it and it would likely have just glanced to one side. She gave him a few seconds prostate massage, but no more as she wanted him to last through the actual penetration.

“Come on, Quinn,” he said, finally. “I seem to remember you got me a present?”

“Hm, did I?” She withdrew her hand and began winding the straps of the strap-on around herself. When it was secure, she loaded her hand with fresh lube and stroked the purple shaft the way she’d seen her boyfriends do when they were starting a wank. As she did this, Justin crawled forward and raised himself onto his hands and knees so that his rear was in line with her hips. “We’ll go slow, yeah?” she whispered, running a hand up his spine subconsciously as if it might relax him. “And if it’s too big—”

“It’ll fit,” he breathed. He had one hand under himself, which might have been on his cock, but she wasn’t sure.

“Alright,” she said, peaceably. She lined the tip up and pushed forward, feeling the resistance melt away as they passed what would have been the head and trying not to let the easy glide tempt her into speeding up. It was hard, though; she felt like he might not have any insides, like she was gliding into empty space. To be fair, there was an easy-slip spell on the toy, just in case your slick-spells weren’t up to scratch. She’d wanted Justin to be comfortable, after all, she wasn’t that familiar with muggle lube and didn’t know if it measured up to wizarding methods. Justin seemed to be doing fine, though. His back arched as she hit the half-way mark and his fingers — both hands returned to the mattress — were bunched in the folds of the comforter. Quinn, trusting that the strap-on had sufficiently lodged itself, moved her hands to his waist and instead of pressing the last inch into him, drew him slowly back until his skin was flush against her denim trousers.

“How’s that?” she whispered, ducking forward next to his ear.

“Pretty—pretty good,” he panted. “I did it, didn’t I? I wasn’t actually…” He felt behind himself to make sure she really was all the way in. “Damn, I’m good. You could go a little deeper, even.”  
  
“Let’s take what we’ve got, sir,” Quinn said, rolling her eyes. “You can compare dick sizes later.”  
  
He tried to grin back at her, but couldn’t quite twist all the way around, so she only caught sight of his nose and tousled, sweaty hair. She could tell he was pleased with himself, though. “On?”

“On,” she agreed, and pulled back. She should do this more often — it was a good core workout.

It didn’t take too long. He needed her to slow down a few times, and once she pulled out completely because he seemed like he was heroing through, but when he came it was harder than any orgasm she’d seen him have yet. His whole body shivered under her hands, and his one arm, which was supporting him as he used the other to jerk himself off, collapsed and he melted into the mattress, bucking feebly at his own hand.

Quinn was actually uncomfortably wet between her own legs; she rather thought the charm on her underwear must be wearing out. Maybe it was a good thing. Justin might be suspicious or offended if all that activity hadn’t gotten some reaction down there, and she didn’t really think she wanted him to find out she was a witch because of some fluid-absorbing underwear.

“Wait,” Justin said, as she began to pull out of him. She could tell he was blushing even if his face was turned away. “Could you, like, leave it in for a minute?”

“Sure.”

“And,” he managed to twist far enough to look back at her, “just hold me, on your side?”

Ah. He was sort of lying in his own cum, but that was his deal, and it was his birthday.

“Only if you’re comfortable,” he added quickly, reading her silence as refusal. “It’s fine, it was just an idea.”

“Shh.” She leaned sideways so that they tipped over onto their sides, the strap-on still lodged inside him, Quinn spooning him from behind. “I don’t mind at all,” she murmured in his ear. They lay like that for a few minutes and Quinn just listened to him breathing. It wasn’t a relaxed breath — it hitched and grew shallow every now and then — but it seemed like a happy one. Well, this was pretty damn intimate, she reflected as she put a hand back to his naked waist. She didn’t think she could, in good conscience, go much longer without opening up to him, and what would this look like then? Would he stick around? Would he want magic in the bedroom? Merlin, let him want magic in the bedroom. Apart from any added enjoyment, it just made things so much easier.

“Alright,” Justin said at last, starting to squirm. “You’re going to have to take it out now or I’m gonna get hard again.”

She rolled away and the strap-on came free, waggling bizarrely. “Would that really be such a bad thing?”

“Anything that happens now is either going to be a let down or really painful.” He rolled towards her, but stopped as he looked down himself and his cum-covered side. “Ugh. Ok, I need to shower.”

“I’ll change the bed,” she said, shooing him off when he tried to help. “Go, clean yourself. Then we can snuggle _cleanly_.”

That night she snuggled close to him, trying not to think about the following evening when they’d be dining with her parents, with poor Lucky hiding away somewhere, probably with the historian, Charles. She spent the morning in much the same manner until they left to get lunch from a nearby chip shop, holding hands in the kind of way Quinn might have scorned normally, but today she didn’t mind it.

After they had bought a bag of chips and two slices of pizza, they wandered to a park across from a muggle hospital and sat down on a bench to eat. They ate in silence for a while, and Quinn thought at first that Justin was enjoying the easy quiet like her, but when she turned to offer him the chips she saw that his eyebrows were furrowed.

“What’s up?” she asked.

He hesitated for a moment, then pointed to the far side of the park. “There’s an underground river that runs through here.” His finger drifted off to the left. “And runs out to the Thames. The river Effra.”

She followed his pointing hand with her gaze, not really following his train of thought. “How do you know that?”

“For my job,” he said simply. He looked at her, almost sadly. It was like he was trying to tell her something but for the life of her she couldn’t understand what.

“Are you still on for seeing my parents today?” she asked.

Now he looked guilty. “Oh no, of course I want to see them. Sorry, I’m just in a bit of a mood. I’ll—I’ll tell you later.”

“Ok,” she said, wishing he’d chosen some other day to get philosophical on her. “It’s nearly two. We could take the long way back through the market, pick up some of those biscuits you like before we get the bus.”

She was relieved to see him smile, and they set off, scattering pigeons.

They caught the bus at four and it was an hour and a half to the town where her parents lived. Luckily, you could walk from the station, because her parents didn’t have a car, and Quinn led Justin along at a brisk trot, half afraid some local wizard friend of her parents would recognize her and give her away. Eventually the iron gates of their drive came into view and Quinn thrust him through, breathing only slightly easier on the other side. Now it was all in the hands of her parents.

“Darling! Quinn! Hector, she’s here — they’re here!” Her mother, in a passably-muggle dress (though Quinn thought the sequins were shining a little too brightly), stood in the doorway with her arms open as wide as her smile, beckoning them in.

“Mrs. Attwater,” Justin said, holding out his hand with a nervous grin.

“And you,” her mother said, taking not his hand but his whole arm and dragging him into a hug, “must be the Justin we’ve heard _so_ much about. Hector! Hector where are you?” she called back into the foyer.

“I’m just here, Abigail,” Quinn’s father said as he came into view, dressed in more thoroughly non-magical, though less standard muggle attire. “Ah, at last. Come in, you two or we’ll have to serve dinner here on the front steps.” Both parents laughed delightedly at that, and Quinn rolled her eyes forcefully at Justin, whose eyes grew a little wider in response.

“You weren’t kidding,” he muttered to her as they were shepherded through to the sitting room.

“We can always sneak out through the greenhouse — they probably wouldn’t even notice we’re gone.”

Now he rolled his eyes. “I’m _happy_. There’s nothing wrong with being a little, uh…”

“Unbearable?” she smirked.

“Eccentric,” he said firmly.

“Remind me to get you a dictionary for your next birthday.”

“You think you can fit a dictionary in me?”

She stared at him and he seemed shocked by his own daring.

“Alright, enough secret whispering you two,” Quinn’s father interrupted. He’d taken the sofa across from the fire, while her mother was sitting in the high-backed armchair in the corner. That left them the loveseat in front of the door, the perfect place to put someone you wanted to interview or intimidate. Quinn frowned and dragged it pointedly so that it was next to the fire, ignoring her mother’s half-hearted protest.

“There. Now we’re all settled,” her mother said, throwing a pointed look at Quinn. “How was the journey.”

“Oh it was fine,” Justin said in a very boyfriend-meets-parents voice. “I slept for most of the ride actually. Lovely town, though.”

“You haven’t seen any of it yet,” Quinn reminded him.

“Yes, well.” He shrugged and smiled winningly at her parents who were practically swooning.

“You’ll get a good sleep tonight,” her mother said. “We’ve got the highest quality down there is — perfect for dreamless sleep. And of course we’ll feed you up first.”

“Quite right,” her father chimed in. “After a meal from our cook, you’ll drift right off. Superb fare she makes, though of course,” he added at a warning look from her mother, “she keeps mainly to herself, so we’ll be serving ourselves.”

A soft chime rang through the room. “That’s dinner now!” her mother said cheerfully. “Quinn, why don’t you lead the way and show Justin where he’s sitting.”

It was necessary to lead the way — the house was by no means easy to navigate and had plenty of side rooms and passages. Luckily, they weren’t too far from the dining room and Quinn hastily installed Justin at the foot of the table while her parents began thrusting dishes of various sides at him, a bit aggressively, but surprisingly naturally, given that the dishes usually offered themselves.

“Try the mashed parsnips, dear, they’re one of Lucky’s most enchanting—”

“Or the stewed prunes. Not to be missed. I’ll tell you, once I had prunes at the—”

“But have some of the potatoes at least. And you’ll need some butter for that; here—”

“The most important is, of course, the asparagus.”

They went on and on throughout the meal and the dessert, Quinn occasionally giving surreptitious nods or shakes of her head as Justin quailed under the sheer mountain of choices presented to him. Between conversation about the food, her parents questioned him about the nature of his work, his family, and his education, though he would barely get out a sentence in reply before one of them was off on some semi-related story that he simply must hear. Quinn featured prominently in many of these, and, while the embarrassing ones obviously annoyed her, she was pleased that they managed to cut magic out so neatly from even the most magical stories.

Dessert came and went and after a long monologue from her mother about her take on the current state of the Yorkshire beaches, Justin politely excused himself to use the restroom. Quinn jumped as if she’d been electrocuted, but her mother put a firm hand over hers and said sweetly, “Just down the hall, all the way, and on your right. Give us a shout if you get lost.” Then, once he had left the room and his footsteps had faded away, she said more quietly to Quinn, “Don’t fret, dear. I told you, we’ve got muggle-repelling charms on everything important and the mirrors and portraits are all taken care of. Your father even removed the extension charm on the bathtub.”

“Oh — right!” Quinn shook her head. For once her parents’ fastidiousness was coming in useful.

“I must say, I think you’ve picked a good one this time,” her father said, smiling. “Not that the others weren’t fine young men, but—”

“Oh, of course,” her mother said, nodding fervently. “We’re happy if you’re happy, but really dear. He does seem delightful. So polite — so intelligent! So very kind.”

“And while he’s down the hall,” Her father leaned forward. “I wondered if you’d seen our copy of _Power over the Vanished_. We seem to have misplaced it.”

“ _Power over the_ …” Quinn echoed, nonplused. She knew her parents liked to read, but seriously. There were novels for that.

“Charles wanted a look at it,” her mother explained. “He’s very interested in vanishing spells and that sort of thing. Elemental magic—”

“Teleportation,” her father cut in. “All very high-level stuff. It’s for this ministry assignment he’s working on — wasn’t that it, Abigail?”

“Hush, dear, that’s the bathroom door.” They heard Justin making his way back down the hall.

“What was that article you found in the muggle paper last night, Abigail?” her father asked. “On the bicycle effort? We ought to ask Justin his opinion.”

Quinn never heard her mother’s reply because at that moment Justin appeared in the doorway and something about his wide-eyed expression told her they’d slipped up. Somehow, despite all her parents’ precautions, she could tell that he knew. She cleared her throat. “Ah, excuse me. I’m just going to check something with him in the hall.” Her parents looked around curiously, but made no objection and she shut the door firmly behind herself. “So…” she said awkwardly.

“You’re a witch?”

“Look,” she said, letting out a long and despairing sigh. “It’s not that big a deal, really. We’re not that different from mug—from non-magical people. We—”

“I know! I’m a wizard!”

She sputtered into silence. Well that was unexpected.


	11. Justin

As he made his way down the hall, Justin paused here and there to admire the paintings hanging on the stone walls. The place easily matched up to the elegant style of the wizarding manors he’d stolen from — even the chandeliers were uncharacteristically ornate. He supposed wealth had its style whether you were magic or not. While he was muggleborn and his parents relatively well-off, he hadn’t had much experience with muggle architecture except from the outside, so he didn’t question the fairies carved into the ceiling or the sparkling stars embroidered across the curtains. Still, something was a little too familiar about the place — something beyond general style. It was almost as if he’d been there before.

There — down on the right — that must be the bathroom door. And on the left… His breath caught in his throat. Slowly, looking guiltily over his shoulder, he pushed open the door to the little library with its dragonhide armchairs and the singing statues on the mantelpiece. He would have stood there for several minutes with his mouth hanging open, his brain numbly flashing: SHE’S A WITCH, had it not been for the man standing with his back to Justin, one hand skimming the shelves. The man turned at the sound of the door and Justin quickly shut it on him, hoping he hadn’t recognized him, for the last time the man had seen him, Justin had been escaping from the house with a stolen book, and of course the man had been very naked, though he hadn’t seemed much perturbed by either of these facts at the time.

Breathing heavily, he marched back down the hall to the dining room, hardly knowing what he was going to say, but knowing full well that he was too flustered to brush this off. Had it just been Quinn he might have been able to play it as something sexual, but there were parents present and his mind wasn’t offering any parent-appropriate excuses.

When he rounded the door, he knew instantly that Quinn understood. Their eyes met and hers widened. She muttered a quick excuse to her parents and joined him in the hall, shutting the door behind her.

“So…”

“You’re a witch?” Justin breathed.

“Look, it’s not that big a deal, really.” Justin almost snorted. “We’re not that different from mug—from non-magical people. We—”

“I know!” he said, a little too loudly, and dropped his voice as she looked toward the dining room door. “I’m a wizard!”

She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him, frozen, like she’d been petrified.

Justin let out a soft laugh. “So all this time, I thought you were a muggle, and you thought I was a muggle.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said shakily, as movement slowly came back to her. She shook her head like she was trying to get water out of her ears. “I just—you’re serious?”

“Yeah! And I assume you’re serious,” he said, gesturing down the hall.

At this she grabbed his arm. “Serious how — what did you find? What made you realize?”

“I—” He paused for a fraction of a second, not sure he wanted to throw the fact that he had stolen from her on top of the fact he was a wizard. “The library is full of magic books? Did you not worry I might like, peek around?”

“Arrgh!” Quinn slammed a palm to her forehead. “Of course. My parents put muggle-repelling charms up, but—”

“Oh,” Justin said, understanding. They looked at each other for a moment, then broke into identically massive grins.

“I cannot fucking believe this,” Quinn said. Then she kissed him, quite hard in fact. He had to stretch his lips when they broke apart, but it had been worth it. Kissing Quinn was like kissing sunshine — fierce, hot, and unapologetic.

“So, what now?” he asked.

She sighed. “I don’t even know. There’s so much — _so much_ — we have to talk about.”

“This is okay, right?” Justin said. It had suddenly occurred to him that she might be disappointed. “That I’m magic?”

Her eyes softened. “Of course! I was honestly freaking out a bit about telling you I was magic. Don’t get me wrong,” she added hastily. “I liked you when I thought you were a muggle, too. It doesn’t change how I feel about you at all, but, well. It does change a lot of…”

“Logistics?” Justin supplied impishly.

She smirked. “I was hoping you would be into the speediness of magic cleanup.”

“Oh, yes!” Justin said and covered his mouth. Literal worlds were opening up before him. “I can use cleaning charms in front of you!”

“I was looking forward to showing you,” Quinn said, a little ruefully.

“Hey,” Justin said firmly. “You want to show me how, I won’t stop you. I am muggleborn afterall, so I can channel the me before I learned about magic.” He looked into her face, which was swirling with more emotion than he’d ever seen before, and his insides melted. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He wanted to kiss her, to strip naked here in the middle of the hall, to run out into the street shouting to strangers. He loved her, and for a moment he couldn’t understand why the feeling hit him so strongly at this moment — it certainly wasn’t because he’d found out he could do cleaning charms in front of her — but then he realized: Quinn was a girl who lived her heart on her sleeve (or in her mouth, rather); she lived in the moment and said exactly what was on her mind. But it wasn’t often that she shared her past. To be fair, he’d had to excerpt from his past pretty heavily, too, but the way she was looking at him now was quite naked. _There’s so much we have to talk about_ , she’d said. That’s what he really wanted in this moment. To just sit in some secluded corner of the void and talk and talk until they had nothing left to share.

The sound of a door creaking open broke his momentary reverie — not the door of the dining room: the library door.

“Shit,” he said, and dragged Quinn unceremoniously down the hall to the large dresser he’d seen in the foyer.

“What—” she spluttered.

“In!” He climbed in after her and swung the delicate panel of wood shut behind them, closing them into muffled darkness.

Quinn’s wand flared and she glared at him. “Justin, what’s going on?”

“I, uh, need to come clean about something,” he began awkwardly.

Quinn narrowed her eyes. “I have zero idea where this is going but am both worried and intrigued. Proceed.”

He cleared his throat. “Alright. You know how I said, when we first met, that I was a thief? I stole books?”

“Please don’t tell me you’re the Phoenix,” Quinn groaned.

“No, but I do steal books from manor libraries. You see, in the wizarding world,” he stopped himself. “I suppose you know that already — but we don’t have public libraries, like in the muggle world, so it's really hard to get your hands on books unless you buy them or have really good connections.”

“So you steal them instead?”

He frowned. “I prefer to think of it as renegade borrowing. I return them when I can, I just believe there should be a system so those of us—” he stopped again, not wanting to offend her but she shook her head and motioned for him to continue.

“I get it — there should be an equal playing field — books for all.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s kind of the reason I realized you were magic. You see…I’ve…been here before…” He waited a moment while she processed this, then her eyes went wide as owl eyes.

“You _didn’t!_ ”

He raised his shoulders guiltily. “Sorry.”

“That’s brilliant! You must be good to get around my parents. And Lucky! Who’s our house-elf, by the way.”

“To be honest, your security charms are kind of shit. If it hadn’t been for—” he looked at the door, wondering if Charles really had seen him or not.

Quinn tapped his knee to keep him going. “What? Did Lucky spot you or something?”

“Who’s the guy — he was in your library just now.”

Quinn gasped. “ _Charles_ saw you? He didn’t say anything; my parents would have told me. Charles?”

Justin tapped her back impatiently. “Who. Is. Charles.”

Quinn waved an airy hand. “My parents always have some scholar or apprentice cook to stay.” Justin cringed inwardly — that apprentice cook was his informant, Bess. “Charles is just the latest — a historian or something. Hey, what was the book you stole? Was it—”

“ _Power over the Vanished_ ,” they said together, then stared at each other.

“Why?” he asked.

“Dad just told me it was missing, and that Charles was looking for it.”

“He was looking for an obscure textbook on high-level vanishing charms?” Justin said incredulously. Who was this guy?

“Yeah,” Quinn said slowly, a worried expression coming over her face. “He said he was into vanishing spell, elemental magic, teleportation—”

“The seventh flame,” Justin muttered to himself. Then he looked sharply up at Quinn. “Quinn, what else do you know about this guy? Why is he here?”

“Nothing, really.” She looked alarmed now. “He just told my parents he was a historian working with the Ministry on some project. What, you think he’s lying?”

Justin ran a hand over his forehead, which was damp with sweat. They were, admittedly, in a coat-filled wardrobe. “The books I’ve been studying — they’re all on vanishing magic, really high-level stuff—”

“Don’t brag,” Quinn said, seemingly unable to stop herself.

“Focus?” She nodded apologetically. “Well, I just came across this spell — potion, really — called the seventh flame and it…well, you know how the Phoenix works, don’t you?”

“Sure, he steals a bunch of books and then burns down the library.”

“And vanishes,” Justin said, the theories he’d been reading flowing together in a beautiful web of magic. “He’s using this spell to vanish the books and himself!”

Quinn made a face. “Don’t be silly. You can’t vanish yourself.”

“You can vanish living things,” he countered. “I found a spell that makes a vanishing pocket and I dipped my own toes in them and they were fine.”

“You dipped your toes—? What were you thinking?” Quinn looked almost angry at his recklessness.

“It was fine! The theory was there, and I’m really good with theory at this point.”

“Merlin, you must have been a star at Hogwarts,” Quinn said, half admiring, half frustrated.

“Not really,” he admitted. “I didn’t do so well when teachers were telling me what to research. It was my own projects that I was really good at. And then it was hard for a while after Hogwarts before I figured out how to steal…anyway. Hey, why weren’t you at Hogwarts?”

Quinn shrugged. “Homeschooled.”

Justin sniggered and Quinn smiled. “I imagine that was challenging and all.”

“You have no idea,” Quinn sighed. “But, so this is possible — he can vanish himself? Why do you think it’s Charles?”

“Because this is the stuff I’m reading about — these are the kinds of libraries he goes after; this is the kind of spell he must be using. How can it be a coincidence that he’s looking up this stuff?”

“You know, the more you explain this, the more it sounds like you’re the Phoenix. I know you’re not,” she added quickly as he began to protest. “I believe you. I’m just saying, you’re a lot like him.” They sat in silent thought for a moment before she lifted her head again. “What did Charles do when he saw you — last time, I mean?”

“Well, he,” Justin blushed and could feel rather than see Quinn’s amusement. “I went out through the bathroom and he was in the tub."

“And?” Quinn prompted, eyes twinkling.

“And your house-elf — Lucky — came to check on the window I’d left open. I didn’t have anywhere to hide, so he, uh, helped me.” He swallowed. “He told me to get in the tub with him and then, when Lucky had gone, he gave me a boost out the window.”

Quinn was trying so hard to suppress her giggles that her wand shook, making the shadows around them shake wildly. Finally, she managed to compose herself enough to say: “I’m waiting to hear why you’re blushing. Is it just because you were in the bath with him, or?"

Justin rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I mean, I was like nose to nose with his dick, and he’s—” He held up his hands to indicate the significant length of Charles’ penis.

“Merlin, really?” Quinn raised her eyebrows. “Goes to show you never can tell. That’d be about the size of the toy I got you.” She said it lightly and her eyes had a curious delicacy to them as if she was asking him a question.

“What?” he said bluntly.

“Nothing. It’s just…kinda sexy thinking about you in the bath with him. So you think he’s here to rob us?”

“Uh yeah,” Justin continued, struggling to draw his mind back to the issue at hand. “And now he’s seen me, so obviously we’re going to have to deal with that.”

“Hm. I suppose we’ll have to keep an eye on him then,” Quinn mused. “Though how we’re supposed to stop him setting the library on fire… Maybe we ought to contact the ministry?”

Justin shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe you could wait till I’m gone for that?”

“But you’d have to explain the vanishing spells to them,” Quinn pointed out.

“Ahhh, yeah. It’s just, they’d better not end up suspecting me. I’d really like not to end up in Azkaban.”

“Well if Charles really is the Phoenix, then turning him in exonerates you.”

Justin wasn’t sure if he was going to agree with her or not, but he was distracted by the light spilling in on them as the wardrobe doors were pulled open. Charles stood over them, smiling benignly.


End file.
